


Old Friend

by scrawlingcomet



Category: Final Fantasy XV
Genre: Gen
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2017-12-29
Updated: 2017-12-29
Packaged: 2019-02-23 12:27:05
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,288
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/13190076
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/scrawlingcomet/pseuds/scrawlingcomet
Summary: Ardyn visits Gilgamesh in the first year of the Starscourge trying to find company in misery





	Old Friend

Gilgamesh is there when the Sun sets for the last time, he knows what is to come he’s waited so long for it. However, actually facing the darkness in its physical embodiment, it takes more than he ever thought he’d need to just stand, so instead he leaps, high into the air summoning his will.

 

Ardyn sways in with the darkness along the bridge to and fro like unruly waves of the sea. The darkness moves with him churning and swelling ready to swallow whatever it meets.

 

“Hello, old friend.” He says smooth and sharp, and Gilgamesh is on him then descending high from the sky swinging a sword of light, but he evades him with that strange lazy ease of his.

 

“You are not welcome here.” Gilgamesh states when they stand apart. Ardyn slouches easy and relaxed, but not at all yielding to the way Gilgamesh stands tall and ready, a luminescent greatsword in hand.

 

“Come now, you know me.” Ardyn’s smile widens but it seems he does it more to himself than to cause any ease.

 

“I knew you once before, but that was countless moons ago. Now? I know you no longer.” He goes in again swinging viciously, and again Ardyn evades him. His sword just scrapes the earth before he is able to right himself to lunge in again. Fast enough to leave a trail of light his sword comes down to strike, but Ardyn’s palm meets the edge of the sword holding it just a hair away from his face.

 

Gilgamesh bears down but is unable to gain ground on Ardyn with just his right arm. A glove of darkness swirls again and again up around Ardyn’s hand trying to keep the blade braced even as it sizzles rapidly against its holy aura.

 

“Now, now, don’t go making me mad. I came to you peacefully, I only wish to speak.” He says calmly but his face betrays him, black purple leeching into the white of eyes and dripping down his face, his skin bleaching bone white and cracked.

 

Ardyn shoves Gilgamesh off and away from him. “After all it is not like you can defeat me.” He shakes his hand till it stops smoking. Anyone else would think he stands unguarded, but he knows about Gilgamesh, who he was, and who he is now, and the weight of his calculating gaze almost makes Gilgamesh question himself, almost.

 

“That is not my place.” Gilgamesh states. _‘Even if it feels like my burden.’_ The air hums and contracts around his left shoulder his phantom arm coming into space and he holds his sword with both hands.

 

“Oh my, _that,_ is certainly new.” Ardyn sounds indulgently delighted, yet still he makes no move to summon any sort of weapon. He cocks his head to the side, his face shifting away from his true one pulling together to smooth flesh over ooze, his ever present lazy smile clearer. “I’ve only come for what is mine.”

 

“There is nothing here that is yours to claim.”

 

For the briefest second his smile falters and then sets again sharper. “Oh? So you agree with them then?” In a flash of red Ardyn holds a sword against Gilgamesh, blade braces blade. They part for a moment and then warp to ram against each other. In red lightning, purple maelstrom, and inky darkness they clash upward, twisting and whirling, defying gravity, meeting blow for blow.

 

Then suddenly they drop down shaking the bridge as they meet it kicking up dust, and tilting swords imbedded in it. Heaving they both stand a distance away.

 

Gilgamesh gestures to the dark blank sky above them. “What is there to dispute?”

 

As if drunk and delirious Ardyn laughs long and high but ends bitterly low and biting. “They wrought this, old friend. I did what they asked! I cured their sick, ate their sins, and carried their feeble promises. And what did I get for it? Rejected by a rock, defamed by my brother, turned away from my own throne by gods who did nothing, forgotten by those I saved. Yes, there is nothing, to dispute. Dear. Old. Friend.” He spits out something small and dark, curdled and heavy. His pupils start burning gold as darkness crawls back into his eyes.

 

“You did not deserve what happened to you, what you became, you did not know the fate you chose, but,” And for a moment Gilgamesh pauses, tempted to take off his mask and let his sincerity be known, but there is no reasoning with a festering old wound. “But, that was then, when you were young and still new to this world. Now, over a millennia, and we have both chosen to be who we are.”

 

Something in this makes Ardyn laugh, and laugh, and laugh. Something sad and broken comes out every now and then and its like he keeps laughing to cover up each time it happens.

 

Too caught up in this laughing fit the lunging warp Gilgamesh does is too fast for him to stop or dodge and it knocks him well past the bridge’s gate.

 

Ardyn keeps laughing till it echoes all around them. Darkness swirls up everywhere and pools on the floor, shaping upwards for daemons to crawl out off. “Still you try to beat me?”

 

“As I said before, that is not my place.” He says firmly slashing the daemons down before they can leap to attack. Daemons, all lost in their sickness, will always be easy to cut down. Ardyn, however, like Gilgamesh himself is very different from daemons, powerful and conscious. He is much closer to a god than Gilgamesh himself, but he cannot respect that, knowing that more than anything, even more than his pain, scorn fuels that power and he has set the world to rot so that they all will suffocate with him.

 

“Always the proper Shield.” He sneers.

The whole cavern begins to shake and rumble. Ardyn almost stumbles, the rhythm of his swaying thrown off a beat till he gets used to the way the entire chasm seems to be groaning to life.

 

“Once more, you are not welcome here.” Many, many voices trail on the end of Gilgamesh’s words. He cannot kill Ardyn, no, the Chosen King will return to do so, but he will not let him gain ground here.

 

Ardyn laughs again. “Take comfort where you can I guess.” He makes a show of shrugging his shoulders.

 

Spirits rise up moving with the Blademaster’s will. No he cannot beat the forgotten king, but he will fight.

___

 

Ardyn came only to play a game. He finds slicing stone in two delightful. Relishes the screams of the fallen, be they his forces or Gilgamesh’s. He is too satisfied as he wobbles exhaustion catching up with him.

 

For Gilgamesh everything burns. Sweltering under metal and cloth, everything threatens to smother him. He wants to swing but his arm his numb and heavy, his shoulder locked into place.

 

“Alright then, old friend. I will allow you this. For old times sake.” Ardyn’s breath evens. He wasn’t tired at all, just high on the chaos, the broken crushed rock, the thick blanket of ash in the air.

 

Gilgamesh watches the darkness recede, clenches his fits till it trembles, till the feeling sparks back and instead it hurts cutting and deep down into his bones.

 

It is just him again. Spirits nestled back into their graves. Time passes and the present is now the past.

 

He pops off his mask and lets to cool rush sharp and icy into his lungs, lets it wick away the sweat on his skin.

 

It is just him, alone and eternal, and he will be what he must.

**Author's Note:**

> I don't know lol, I genuinely don't. It's just one of those fics that I just blink and it's written..or it feels like that. One of the other other fics I worked on crockpotting the Iris one. For the most part I just held off until episode Ignis to see what I might add lol.
> 
> Is Gilgamesh my muse or is ffxv as a whole my muse? 
> 
> But thanks for reading~  
> Feel free to stop by and say hi [ scrawlingcomet ](https://scrawlingcomet.tumblr.com/)


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